In areas where AT&T’s top speeds are higher, the company said it “will offer a broadband wireline DSL service at speeds up to 5Mbps to households in AT&T’s wireline footprint for $10 per month for the first 12 months of service (rising to $20 per month for the remainder of the term of the commitment)”. In another recent filing with the FCC, the carrier is promising to make two new low-income discount programs available to qualifying consumers in its wireline footprint for four years. The first would provide speeds of up to 5 megabits per second (or roughly half as fast as the current national average) for $10 a month.
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The company has been extending broadband related assurances to FCC on all fronts and has reportedly pledged to bring its 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) service, GigaPower, to 11.7 million customer locations provided its proposed acquisition of DIRECTV is approved. The monthly price would then rise to $20.
AT&T said it plans to roll out the discounted service plans within a “reasonable time period” after closing the merger. AT&T is hoping that this will incentivize the FCC to approve gobbling up DirecTV. Further, the deal will enable AT&T to provide bundled services inclusive of video, mobile and broadband offerings. It will also help increase AT&T’s pay-TV customer count to 26 million.
AT&T is trying to acquire DirecTV, a deal worth some $67 billion that would create a soul-sucking leviathan telecoms company.
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The offerings are similar to Comcast’s Internet Essentials (NASDAQ: CMCSA) pricing plans, where are available to families whose children qualify for subsidized school lunches. Both the FCC and DOJ had expressed strong reservations against that transaction. AT&T Inc.(NYSE:T) has promised to honor FCC open-Internet restrictions for three years that were established in 2010. AT&T is proposing a four-year commitment in total. Click to get this free report >>.
